Where Did the Time Go?

Surprise! The last time I sent out an email and posted in Substack, was May 2025. I thought I was going to write semi-regularly, but then all of the sudden, a lot of time had passed. There are multiple reasons for that of course, but here a couple of them. Clearly I need a schedule and deadlines to meet for this sort of endeavor. Just saying I’ll write when I think about something interesting doesn’t work. It’s in some ways a classic lesson about creativity. You can’t just wait and hope the muse will show up, you have to show up first.

To get restarted some updates.

Update No. 1 Life got a bit complicated as my mom’s health issues worsened. As many of you know, she passed away in November of last year. I thought I was handling the stress well, but sooner or later, no matter how clueless I was, the body will make you take a break. And the day family and friends gathered to celebrate my mom’s life, I crashed.

We’d had a wonderful afternoon. Shared stories, laughter, and tears with family and friends were all we could have hoped for. But as things were winding down, I realized I was starting an ocular migraine which is usually a precursor to one of my rare migraines.

The short version of the story is a trip to the hospital where they were concerned that I was having a stroke since I couldn’t answer any of the basic questions, had trouble forming words, and, it turned out, had a blood pressure that spiked at 217 over 191. The hospital went right into stroke protocol and though it was a wild thirty-plus hours, by 3:00 am Monday morning, I was doing better and went home that afternoon.

The good news, thanks to multiple visits to multiple doctors over the past few months, it looks like there was no underlying  physical cause – just stress. “Just”. I’m doing fine

Here’s my public service announcement — I suspect I had been running a higher than normal blood pressure for some time and, even though I was taking  medicine, I never checked my own blood pressure at home. I check it every morning now (and I’m taking more medicine.) My suggestion is if you have a family history (I do) or if you are taking medicine, get in the habit of taking your blood pressure. I don’t know if you need to do so daily, but ask your doctor what might be good for you. If I had done this, I might not have ended in the hospital.

Update No. 2  It’s about time for me to retire from consulting. I have a couple of projects on the calendar, but that will be it. I’ll be keeping the business open for a few months to wrap things up, but it’s time to try new things.

Update No. 3 I’m going back to school this fall!  (Hence the Back to School theme.) About a year ago, I learned from a friend about a kind of program called Public History and I was fascinated with the idea. I looked online to see what I might do and found a program just down the road at Texas State University.  I’ll write more about this process later, but I can’t wait and  in a couple of weeks, I’ll be a graduate student working on a masters degree.  Not anything I’d planned, but here we are.

Update No. 4 I’ve been working on a memoir about working in higher education and it’s reaching a stage where I hope to have an announcement on that in the near future. But overall, I’m still writing even though I haven’t been creating this newsletter.

Update No. 5 I’ll be writing this newsletter weekly again. I’ll send it to your mailbox as always and I’ll be posting on Substack. I hope you’re glad to see me back in your inbox, but if not, you can of course opt out.

I still think in terms of academic years and the first week of August was often my vacation to have a break just before the semester started. Soon on campus, the RAs will be returning to campus and, as far as I’m concerned, that means the semester has started. Instead of greeting new RAs  this year, I’ll be going to New Graduate Student Orientation! More to come as I’ll be sharing what happens when a retired administrator goes back to school!

Take care,

Gage